Water is a living thing. It moves; it flows; it cannot be contained. Water is stronger than anything in its way. It can wear down mountains, bring down houses, turn everything to slush and mush. Water always gets its way.
And at low tide, these stones were revealed, but only for a few hours a day until they reclaimed their position once more in the mysterious depths. And here was an upflung rowing boat, its paint peeling, not remotely seaworthy, flung by chance upon a tiny shingle beach, the smallest lick of sand, a shallow outcrop in an area so deep, it couldn’t be measured until they invented satellites.
And next to the rowing boat, cowering, shuddering, were two children staring up as Ramsay and then, being heaved up, Zoe, who clambered over the top and stared back in amazement, in absolute disbelief at the found children.
And the voice came again: ‘Mummy.’
Zoe gaped, the wind and the shock already having knocked the breath from her. Ramsay thought she might fall. Instead, she slipped and slithered down the other side of the shingle, weighed down and soaking.
‘Hari. HARI!’ she shrieked.
‘Mummy!’ he said brightly.
Mary jumped up immediately, and Zoe was terrified of how furious she felt.
‘What were you DOING?’ she shrieked. ‘What the hell were you DOING?’
She had never felt a fury like it. It came from a deep, primal place, from the depths of her lizard brain, and she couldn’t possibly have controlled it.
Mary was shivering and sobbing in her white nightgown, her hair drenched around her shoulders, looking once again like the ghost that had haunted the corridors and pathways when Zoe had arrived.
‘Christ, Mary,’ said Ramsay, walking down towards her. ‘You could . . . you could . . .’
He couldn’t even finish the sentence.
Zoe had Hari in her arms. She was choking up seawater, and his little body was soaked right through and utterly freezing so she pressed any warmth she could feel onto him.
‘Ma sister she found me,’ he announced so confidently that Zoe’s jaw dropped open. ‘We go boat.’
‘Hari,’ said Zoe, shaking. ‘Oh my God. Hari. You’re talking.’
But it was more than that. As he beamed up, all fear forgotten and nothing but pride on his face, Zoe clocked something she would only realise later: Hari had the most Scottish accent you could possibly imagine.
‘I’s going on boat,’ said Hari. ‘Bit cauld.’
Zoe shook her head.
‘Oh my God. Oh my God.’
Suddenly the lights of the police boat illuminated the tiny, implausibly narrow spit they had landed on. The helicopter, as soon as it heard, sheared off to land on the nearest part of the coast to take them to the hospital, its clattering a welcome sound.
Zoe burrowed her face in Hari’s little shoulder. Something else plucked her coat and she twitched round.
Mary was standing there.
‘I’m sorry,’ she was saying over and over again. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. He went and found the boat, and I was trying to stop him. I promise, I was trying to stop him!’
‘I go on yon boat wi’ ma sister,’ said Hari proudly.
‘It was his idea,’ said Mary. ‘It was! He’d pushed it off! I was trying to stop him!’
‘Jesus,’ said Zoe. ‘But you let him! You let him!’
Mary shook her head.
‘I was getting him!’
‘Oh God,’ said Ramsay, and Mary stared up at him, terror in her eyes.
‘You hate me,’ she said.
‘Oh Christ, Mary,’ said Ramsay, opening his arms. ‘I love you. I love you to distraction. I just don’t know whether that can possibly be enough.’
‘I loves ma sister,’ said Hari charitably, and Zoe blinked again in utter astonishment as the welcome, comforting tones of the police boat ordered them to stay where they were, even as the waters of the loch were rising again, tapping round their ankles. Had it taken much longer . . . had they slept in even another twenty minutes . . .
But that was not something Zoe could think about for the rest of her life.
* * *
The police made them pull off their wet clothes and wrap themselves in silver blankets and sleeping bags. Ramsay, Zoe couldn’t help noticing, was utterly covered in bruises and cuts. He had been very, very quiet, holding Mary and saying nothing.
Hari, by contrast, suddenly couldn’t stop talking. He loved the police boat beyond everything and wanted to have a look, which the nice police lady was very happy to let him do. Eventually Zoe grabbed him as the boat took them in to the little Beeches shore. All the other boats had rendezvoused there, Murdo at the head, and Zoe threw her arms around him as soon as she saw him and burst into tears, and he patted her on the shoulder and held her up when she couldn’t stand.
They were all despatched to hospital – the helicopter was there, after all – but in fact, only Ramsay needed a couple of stitches in his feet. Regardless they spent the day getting tested and doing interviews and being fussed over and, finally, the hospital insisted on keeping them in overnight. Zoe found the room Hari was in, cosy and warm, and climbed into his bed. He lay there, breathing happily.
‘Oh my God,’ she said, covering her face. ‘I am going to have to call Jaz. Shit. I don’t know what to say. He might not even have left yet.’
‘I loves mah daddy,’ said Hari sleepily.
Zoe was terrified of making too much of Hari speaking in case it was an accident, a one-off, something that would vanish again if she spoke about it. She held him. It was . . . it was something else. He sounded utterly and totally born and bred in the Highlands.
‘What happened, darling?’ she said. ‘What happened this morning?’
‘Mary wanted to play,’ he said. ‘She’s ma sister.’
‘I know,’ lied Zoe. One difficult thing at a time.
‘And I go in the boat.’ He pronounced it bo-at.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘I loves bo-at.’
She buried her face in his neck, unable to get all her limbs around him; if she could, she’d have gone back to being pregnant, absorbed him right back into her body where she could keep an eye on him.
She felt herself falling asleep, drifting off in the warm room in the hospital, nothing to hear in the room but a faint electrical hum, the scent of her child in her nostrils.
‘Monster took us,’ said Hari, yawning.
Zoe blinked.
‘What?’
‘Monster did pushing,’ said Hari. ‘Well, good night.’
And he reached out his little hand and managed to turn out the bedside light as Zoe lay in the darkness, suddenly wide awake.